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	IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY… M. Ghosh More... Hunger: Myth and Reality FAMINE (Lat. fames, hunger), extreme and general scarcity of food, causing distress and deaths from starvation among the population of a district or country. Famines have caused widespread suffering in all countries and ages. A list of the chief famines recorded by history is given farther on. The causes of famine are partly natural and partly artificial. Among the natural causes may be classed all failures of crops due to excess or defect of rainfall and other meteorological phenomena, or to the ravages of insects and vermin. Among the artificial cause~ may be classed war and economic errors in the production, transport and sale of food-stuffs. More... TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH! "Torgsins" - paying with gold for the life of Ukrainian peasants One of the brightest illustrations of how Stalin's regime was able to use the opportunity and make a fortune on people's destitution is the activity of the infamous "Torgsins" during the famine in 1932-1933. Origin of the mysterious abbreviation "Torgsin" in Russian is little known today. But for people exhausted by famine and mass repression it has a paradoxical connotation: "Comrades Russia is Perishing Stalin Exterminates People" - TORGSIN (Russ. Торгсин - "Товарищи Россия Гибнет Сталин Истребляет Народ"), although the real abbreviation stood for: Trade with Foreigners. In the regional and district level towns, "Torgsin" offices appeared in summer 1932. A representative from Moscow in Ukraine administered these branches in Odessa, Kyiv, and Kharkiv. In summer 1932, 50 shops of this network operated in 36 towns of the republic. By June 29, 1932, the All-Ukrainian Torgsin office was established. More... WALTER DURANTY: A LIAR FOR A CAUSE Reading about the tragic anniversary of Famine and about Duranty it occurred to me that there had to be a reason for his duplicity in his reporting of the tragic Famine-Genocide which claimed millions of innocent lives. To learn more about him I read his book I WRITE AS I PLEASE, which he finished writing in 1935… Taras Hunczak More...
	Global Food Surpluses Generate Famine In the late 20th century, famine is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurted as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Famine has become a worldwide phenomenon: death and starvation are striking simultaneously in all major regions of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, Northeast Brazil, South Asia, the Andean altiplano of South America, the former Soviet Union. Michel Chossudovsky More... AGEING POPULATIONS AND MYTHS ABOUT THEM Myths and fallacies currently influence governments in deciding population policies. Even the 2000 report on Replacement Migration from the United Nations Population Division is a fable for our times in its arguments about continuing population growth being essential in developed countries (never mind in the developing ones.) The report argued that the demographic characteristics of the very low fertility countries must change if they are to end up with an economically sustainable age-structure. Pro-natalist policies can be promoted to avert a supposed disaster of 'excessive population ageing'. Yet encouraging more local births may be evading and ignoring important issues - and would be a crying national shame while more than 23 million refugees are homeless and hungry. Nina Sokolenko More...
	Cosmetics & Fragrance Cosmetics are as old as people who use them. The word "cosmetae" was first used to describe Roman slaves whose function was to bathe men and women in perfume. Anthropologists speculate that primitive perfumery began with the burning of gums and resins for incense. Richly scented plants were fused into animal and vegetable oils for ceremonial anointing and for pleasure. compiled by Iryna Maksimova More... LIPSTICK FOREVER! Lipsticks have been around for a long time. According to Meg Cohen Ragas and Karen Kozlowski in their book, "Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick," a reddish purple mercuric plant dye called fucus--algin, 0.01% iodine, and some bromine mannite--was used for lip rouge in Egypt. Little did the ancient Egyptians know that it was potentially poisonous--talk about the kiss of death! Peter Williams More... The Peddling of Beauty All women strive to look beautiful every day, irrespective of weather, stresses, and age. Throughout history, humankind has made efforts to comprehend the essence of beauty and reveal its secrets. Many ancient peoples had a tradition of breaking and destroying beautiful objects because it was believed that beauty could blind the eyes and make a person possessed. The destruction was also a supposed to spur the master craftsmen so they would not stop after one masterpiece, but develop their talent in order to delight people with new works of art. Lesya Butsenko More... Health is Beauty I was struck by this when I was visiting a video store in December 2003. A bunch of teenagers were also choosing films. One of the teenagers picked up a copy of The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe and asked laughing, "Oh man, what about this one?" Fathali M. Moghaddam More... Face-facts in media The media has given us very rigid, uniform beauty ideals. TV, magazines, billboards mean we see beautiful people more often than we see members of our family, the ideal becomes more familiar to us than our friends and thus appears normal and attainable. Andrei Rikberg More... HOW DO I LOOK? It does not take a trained eye to notice that women on TV, billboards and in fashion magazines are always thin. Over the past thirty years, women have been aggressively confronted by an impossibly thin standard of beauty. More... Dialogues and Misunderstandings The seminar "East - West: Dialogues and Misunderstandings" took place in Germany in a little, medieval town of 5,000 inhabitants in the very heart of the country. Not by accident was the place chosen - not far from the border between the former Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. So much money was put into the seminar that even the guests from Western Europe were amazed, let alone the East European participants. A short story by Yevheniya Kononenko More...

	QUO VADIS, HOMO SAPIENS? Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is your favorite Charles Richi, and we are on your favorite Radio show "Nothing Talkers". Today the topic of our debate is - our civilization. Is it good or bad or, in other words, is it progressing in the right way and will there be a bright future? We humans believe in contrasts, and always love to fight: black and white, revolution or evolution, war and peace - to be or not to be and so on. For this purpose, we've invited an extraordinary guest - a primeval man - and I am very excited. More...

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